Typically, scheduled maintenance for aircrafts is based on organizing periodic tasks in a block check or equalized check maintenance plan in order to organize aircraft maintenance tasks, minimize aircraft downtime, and maximize aircraft maintenance facility resources. Fixed letter check maintenance plans have been widely used to master and simplify patterns of reoccurrences for tasks. For example, in a fixed letter check maintenance plan periodic tasks are classified as being one of an ‘A check’, ‘B check’, ‘C check’, or ‘D check’, based on their interval of recurrence. Such fixed letter check maintenance plans naturally reduce a number of task patterns, but this method lacks flexibility. Nowadays users wish to be able to tailor their maintenance plans according to usage parameters and maintenance strategies.
Most aircraft maintenance planning tools and platforms utilize a timeline display interface, where all recurrences of each maintenance task are represented as they are planned to occur. This allows visualizing when the next maintenance stops will take place and preparing the aircraft, aircraft operator, maintenance facility, etc., in the planning of the maintenance operations. However, display of tasks in this manner is much less suited for manipulating recurring tasks and control their periods and recurrences. Indeed, on a timeline, tasks of greatly varying intervals become intermixed, yet “cleansing” the timeline in order to display a smaller number of intervals is counterintuitive in such an interface.
Accordingly, a need exists for methods, systems, and computer readable media for managing periodic aircraft maintenance planning in order to provide a more intuitive interface that provides direct user interaction with maintenance tasks to reduce the variety of periodic recurrence intervals.